


On Death and Dying

by Deannie



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Gen, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1995-06-10
Updated: 1995-06-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 16:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scully struggles to carry on without her partner</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Death and Dying

By Dana Scully's reckoning, three days after the incident, there was still no good reason why it wasn't her fault. She'd been stupid, short-sighted, unobservant. She should have seen it coming a mile away... But she hadn't. And two very good agents had lost their lives.

That thought started her crying again, which weakness disgusted her, which only made her cry harder. It seemed like all she could do these days was cry. Cry, and remember that day. The crying was because of the drugs she was given. She knew that. The memories, however, wouldn't stop when she was finally able to rise from this bed. She would dream about them forever.  _And become like him. Driven._  She gave up trying to fight the tears, the memories, and the sleep, and let them all engulf her again. It was a punishment, a penance. It was also the only way she could ever see him again.

 

Denver was hot and getting hotter. As he walked swiftly down Colfax, toward the Capital building, John Parsons cursed the weather. He also took time out to curse the US government, the Department of Defense, and, especially, the FBI.

He saw her again, sitting quietly on the steps, munching, seemingly content, on a salad sandwich.  _Why do all Bureau women eat such healthy food, when the men eat whatever is lying around?_  She saw him but didn't show it. At least, he thought, as he seemed to hesitate and turned away from the building, heading nervously for the war memorials in the square, he hoped she had seen him.  _All I need right now is for the FBI to send some incompetent bimbo after me._  But, of course, he knew this one was nothing of the kind.

Dana Scully was sharp. Too damn sharp for some people. Like Parsons employers. They needed to know what she knew, but the bitch was so joined-at-the-hip with her partner that they could never get to her.

Someone had finally opened the door for them. John Parsons blessed his hidden allies for finding a case to split these two up---Scully here, and the great Fox Mulder back in DC. He started to look guiltily over his shoulder, but only to make sure that Scully had decided to follow him.  _Of course she has. I'm just a two-bit, penny-ante arms dealer._  An "arms dealer" who would get every answer she had about the X-Files.

 

Scully stood easily, picking up her jacket as well as the debris from her lunch, and depositing the latter in a nearby wire bin. She followed John Parsons with her eyes, noting his guilty look back.  _He may not be as stupid as he looks, but he_ is _stupid._  She walked slowly through the square, watched as he crossed Broadway to the central park of the government area, and sped up quickly as he started for the nearest parking lot. She didn't run, didn't need to. She knew each of the four cars he used, making her way to her red rental job as she watched his blue convertible, top up, pull out of the public lot.

She followed him easily as he headed south on Broadway, watching to make sure she didn't miss him in the beginnings of afternoon rush hour. Her red car was actually an asset here. It was the dominant car color in the Front Range area, owing, the natives would have visitors believe, to all the Californians moving in. She didn't buy it. But then, she didn't have to.

Her phone rang, and she slid her hand into her jacket pocket, pulling out the antenna with her teeth. "Scully."

"It's me," came Fox Mulder's bored, laconic voice. She smiled.  _He's got to be on his way back out here,_  she thought.  _The investigation was "mundane" and he's on his way back._

"That investigation was a joke, Scully," he said, not hearing her laughter over the line. "I'm on my way back. How's it going?"

"Fine," Scully replied, regaining control of all but her smile, and turning swiftly as Parsons turned east, headed out toward the now-dead Stapleton Airport. "Parsons isn't quite as stupid as Skinner seems to think, but for a paranoid man," she smiled again, at the oblique reference to her own partner, "he sure doesn't watch his back. It looks like he's headed out to Stapleton now. DIA's predecessor. It would be a great place to stash some 'unofficial' chemicals."

"Maybe not," Mulder replied. "Does its baggage system work?"

Scully laughed silently. "I hope they lose  _your_  baggage on the way in. What time will you be here?"

"Flight should be in about seven tonight." He dropped his voice---characteristic Mulder-playing-big-brother style---"Make sure you don't take any chances."

"Yeah, right," she quipped. "That's your job, remember? I'll be back at the Sheraton by eight, I think. We'll talk about it over dinner."

"Okay," he said, still sounding a bit overprotective, "I'll see you at eight."

Parsons was definitely headed for Stapleton, she decided, as they turned on to Martin Luther King boulevard. She would bet they were just waiting there for the guys at Rocky Flats to pick up their false trail so they could get the hell out of Dodge with the weapons. Except that Rocky Flats already knew it was a false trail. Mulder had seen to that. Now they were just waiting for the FBI to come up with something they could pursue. As Parsons slid into Stapleton the back way, Scully thought she had found that something.

 

Parsons almost laughed as the red Buick took the unexpected right off of MLK. She didn't want him to see her following him, but didn't really think he would be that observant.  _You'd think after twenty-five years, they'd teach them better._  He slid up behind Concourse A, and stepped out into the shadows, waiting for her to follow him.  _She'll do it,_  he thought.  _She's too far away from backup, too far away from her precious Mulder, to back off and wait now._  He had her, and he knew it. Even if she  _had_  called for backup, by the time they got there it would be far too late.

 

Scully parked her car closer to the concourse than she would normally have thought safe. But she was damned if she was going to lose him in a large, mostly abandoned airport.  _Besides, I think he's a little slow to notice that it’s the same car he saw downtown._

She slipped carefully around the corner, taking in his car, taking in the stairwell next to it, taking in all the cover he was likely to find.  _Not much._

* * *

She realized, looking back, that she should have known it was too easy. She should have been able to see that Parsons had been leading her there. Somewhere nice and out-of-the-way. Somewhere far from her partner.

* * *

She walked carefully up the stairwell, thankful for her tennis shoes, which to her looked too incongruous when matched with the smart blue suit she wore, but to a modern office worker, looked just about normal for a woman on her lunch break.

She could hear Parsons talking when she reached the top of the stairs, ducking behind a ticket counter whose dusty facade still bore the Continental sign.  _Departures and arrivals,_  she thought.  _Sorry---final departure's already long gone._

Parsons was somewhere a little farther along the concourse, in toward the main hub. She slipped her gun out and slid carefully to the wall that separated this departure gate from the next. After three such maneuvers, she came to a stop, slipping her head carefully around the wall for a good look.

Parsons stood with a youngish woman, tall, muscular, dark of hair and eyes, but pale of features. Scully recognized her, and the recognition produced a hot feeling in her belly. Parker. Of the FBI.  
Kallie Parker was a doctor, like herself, whose work for the FBI involved autopsies, examinations, and theories. Apparently, Parker also extended her duties to espionage.

Scully's next move could be explained a number of ways: Anger at a fellow agent's betrayal, a strategic move, designed to capture the supposed weak link in the espionage plot---and bring in an FBI traitor as well---or, pure and simple, stupidity. Given the eventual outcome of the situation (even the  _immediate_  outcome), Scully was likely to explain it as stupidity. The kind of stupidity they use as a lesson in Quantico. "Why Mavericks Are Often Both Foolhardy and Dead."

She pulled her gun around the wall first, her body following, and only then saw the third person in this little get-together. The one hiding behind the ticket counter. With the gun. She didn't have time to open her mouth before she fell.

* * *

When she woke up, it was dark and stifling, but she'd take it.  _Beats being dead... I think._  Her shoulder was on fire, owing, no doubt, to the rare stupidity she had shown in getting shot.  _If I live this down, I'll be surprised. Mulder will be on me about this forever._

She took a moment to convince herself that she was, barring the hole in her shoulder, relatively unhurt, then took another moment to survey what she could of the room. She was tied to a chair, arms behind her, in the middle of what looked to be a luggage bin in the airport. At least, she  _thought_  it was a luggage bin. Maybe not. Still, the building sounded dead, so she figured she was still in the airport.

She was blinded momentarily when someone opened the door to the outside. Two someones---Parker and Parsons.  _Am I ever going to_ hate _this._

Parker closed the door behind her, leaving it to Parsons to grope toward the light switch. It was, indeed, a luggage bin. She hoped they delayed long enough for Mulder to get nervous and come out looking for her.

Parsons looked nervous, while the FBI doctor looked anything but.

"So you're the reason they knew where the chemicals would be." Scully couldn't help the flush of anger in her voice.

"Everybody's got to have contacts, Dana," Parker replied reasonably, pulling a folding knife from her jacket pocket. "Right now, we want to know about yours."

* * *

Mulder arrived at the DIA Airport Sheraton at seven-thirty, checked at the desk for the messages he didn't have, and went up to his room to take a shower. After twenty minutes under the tap, he felt almost human again, and called over to Scully's room to see if she was ready to eat. He, as usual, was starving. The big problem they had in DC, the one they had had to drag him off of an admittedly mundane, but at least  _location,_  assignment for, had been solved in a matter of hours. All that travel, all that time, for nothing. He sighed as he listened to her phone ring.

There was no answer.  _No sweat,_  he thought,  _She said she wouldn't be back until eight._  He sat back, wondering if she would be offended if he ate before she got there. He smiled, grabbing the phone again.  _Hell, she'd probably expect it._  He called room service, and ordered a Scully-described "heart-attack special"---hamburger, double order of fries, and a soda (no beer tonight; his head ached enough already).  
As he ate, he mulled over the information they had in this case. Someone had stolen a collection of America's most "unofficial" chemicals weapons, temporarily stored at Rocky Flats, an old Uranium processing plant west of Denver. The deadly nature of the chemicals had prompted Rocky Flats to call for the best teams the government had. For some reason, someone in the FBI had decided that he and Scully were it. He sighed. It was not a case Mulder would have chosen. Simple "catch the terrorists" job here. There was no twist, no hint of the unusual. It was not his style. Still, he thought, popping the last French fry into his mouth, It was proving challenging. The terrorists had devised an elaborate false trail to lead the government away from them. It wasn't genius, but it had taken him some time to figure out, had let him use his skills for putting things together.

Now, they had been given a lead by some of Mulder's contacts in DC, leading them to John Parsons, the small-time dealer, as a likely participant in the plot. Maybe he would provide a little more for them to go on.

He glanced at the clock: eight-fifteen. He tried Scully's cellphone number, and received a recording stating that the unit was "out of range." An FBI cellphone---out of range? His gift for piecing things together kicked into overdrive. She was underground--- _deep_  underground---or she was on a plane. A plane, he thought, his brain gearing up, nerves tingling as he caught the scent, that could have taken off from Stapleton. The dead airport. He called the local bureau head, a friend from Quantico named Calvin Depercio.

"Scully's gone missing."

"What!" Calvin put his hand over the phone, telling his daughter to turn down the damn television for God's sake, he was trying to have a conversation. "When? I just talked to her this morning. She was tailing Parsons, trying to find out some info while you were back in DC."

"Right. I talked to her about three, your time, this afternoon. Told her I was on my way back out here."

For some reason, that thought made Mulder feel guilty. He had left his partner here. No backup, no support. Alone. His brain suddenly hurt---a flash of insight explaining the dead-end assignment.  
His voice betrayed no hint of his mental excitement. "Cal, who else did Rocky Flats call in on this."

"God, Mulder,  _everybody!_  The DoD, the military, NASA. Somebody steals chemical weapons---'unofficial' chemical weapons---from a depot that is supposedly mostly defunct,  _something's_  got to be done."  
The DoD. The military. Mulder could feel the shadows congregating. "Listen, Cal. She told me today that she thought Parsons was heading out to Stapleton." Scully had been the one who knew the layout of the town. "I don't know my way around here, but---"

"It's okay, Spooky," Cal said, dropping into their habits from school. "I'll be there in fifteen---damn, it's DIA---okay, twenty-five, minutes. Meet me downstairs."

"Hey, Cal. Don't mention this to anyone, okay?"

"Mulder..."

"Just for now... Okay?"

 

Mulder hung up the phone, and started pacing. The Shadows were back. A fool's errand back to Washington. A case with the military and the DoD involved. The reminder of the last time was too fresh, too painful. She was gone again, and he should have seen it coming.

* * *

Parsons walked out of the room, feigning disgust at what Parker was able to do with that damned knife. Actually, he was pretty impressed. Maybe it was just the way a woman knew how to make a woman hurt, but Parker was damn good at making Scully scream. Unfortunately, she was not so good at making her talk.

After another twenty minutes, Parker joined him outside. "Well, that didn't work." She folded the knife and slipped it into her jacket pocket, Parsons wincing at her callousness. "What next? We got some sodium penathol?"

 

Scully almost flinched when the door opened again, but it wasn't Parker.  _Thank god._  Her teeth hurt almost as badly as the rest of her from clenching them, trying to ignore the pain. She hadn't said anything, though. She wasn't sure of a lot right now, but she was sure she hadn't said anything.

She hoped Mulder was safe. Because it was clear now that it was him they were after. Him, and the X-Files. She suddenly thought, as Parsons advanced on her, that maybe Mulder wasn't so paranoid after all, with his talk of shadow governments and people being after him for what he knew.  _Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they_ aren't _all out to get you._

Parsons looked down at her callously, almost clinically examining the slices through her blouse: at her chest, her belly, her arms. His stare lingered lewdly as he gazed at her lacerated thighs, visible where Parker had jacked up her skirt. It was good work. Not so deep she'd bleed to death on them, but plenty deep enough to lower her resistance. "Scully," he said matter-of-factly, dropping all pretense of the shallow crook, "I think we're not going to get anything more from you today. You're tense. So I've decided to try to help you loosen up." He lifted a syringe, and Scully knew immediately that they were going to use truth serum. She also knew that in the state she was in, there was nothing she could do about it.

* * *

Cal Depercio could see that Mulder had worked himself up into quite a frenzy during the half hour that it had taken for him to get from his home to the Sheraton. He remembered what his other friends in Washington had said about Mulder's behavior when Scully had disappeared before. He looked pretty much the way Cal had pictured him then. Right down to that haunted look that Cal remembered in his friend's eyes, every time he spoke of Samantha.

"Okay, Spooky, clue me in."

"You're not going to like it."

"You mean, like I don't like the fact that Dana's missing?"  _Shit._

Mulder closed his eyes briefly. "No, I mean like you don't like it when I talk about government conspiracies and shadow departments."

Cal took a deep breath. "Okay, Mulder, spill it."

"Okay. First: Scully and I get called out on this theft. It's not our department, not our style. We come out, find the prime suspect to be a supposedly brainless, small time arms dealer---who can break into Rocky Flats, steal the weapons, and get out without anyone knowing about it? They made his files  _look_  like he was a two bit incompetent." Mulder, as usual, could not say who  _they_  were.

He went on to question the timing of Parsons's appearance in the park---while Scully was on her own. Parsons had to know that Mulder was back in DC by this time, wrapped up in a ludicrous case, designed to give the dealer some breathing room. Someone, Mulder averred, was going to great lengths to set up a plausible scenario, designed solely to capture the one other person who knew everything about the X-Files. And the one person who knew everything about him.

Cal had always known that Mulder was more than a little paranoid, but as they sped toward Stapleton, he could almost believe his old friend. So much so, in fact, that he made a few calls to some trustworthy agents, making sure they'd be at Stapleton when he and Mulder arrived. "Keeping it in the family," Cal said, when Mulder gave him an incredulous look.

"Big family," Mulder observed. Cal would have twenty-five agents at Stapleton in fifteen minutes.

"Yup. Ain't relations grand?"

* * *

Scully could feel the chemical start to take hold of her, feel everything slipping. She tried to concentrate on how much she really didn't want to tell them about her work with Fox Mulder. How much she  _really_  didn't want them to know. Then, as her mind got more and more foggy, she got the idea that that would make her tell them even more, and so tried to shut down that thought process. She was too disoriented by that time to be able to tell if it worked.

"Dana." Parsons. She could still identify his voice. "Dana, what case are you currently working on?"

 _I don't want to tell you I don't want to tell you I don't want to tell you_  "You've stolen chemical weapons from Rocky Flats,"  _I didn't want to say that!_  "I'm supposed to follow you and find out where they are."

* * *

Mulder called Cal over, showed him the blood on the faded grey carpet. "Someone was here," he said, walking to the ticket counter, where he found a discarded shell casing. Smith and Wesson. Six shooter. Not FBI standard issue. He stood wearily as a too-young officer raced up to Cal and all but saluted. "Sir, we think we've got something downstairs."

* * *

"Dana. Tell me about Fox Mulder."

"No."  _I'm not going to tell you anything._

"Dana. What is he like? What is Fox Mulder like?"

"Paranoid." A pause. "Brilliant... He can figure things out."

"What has he figured out, Dana?"

"The trail at Rocky Flats was fake."

She dimly heard Parsons curse, turn to Parker. "Damn it, Kallie, I'm getting nothing here!"

Scully saw Parker slip into her line of vision. "You're not asking the right questions. Scully. What do you know about the X-Files?"

"They're not what Mulder thinks. He thinks there are people working for aliens."

Parker shook her head. "This stuff makes them lose focus. She needs a specific question." Parker leaned very close, whispered in her ear, "Scully. What happened when you disappeared?"

Wrapped suddenly again in that cold, alien light, Scully screamed.

* * *

After a few moments, she came to herself, and could dimly see some confusion going on around her. Heard shots. Heard people screaming, falling. Then Mulder leaned over her. "Scully?"

"Mulder?" She tried to get her mind to connect. If Mulder was here, he had help, right? Nobody went into a situation without backup. That was stupid. "Where's Cal?"

Mulder shook his head at her, looked puzzled for a moment about her vague look. "Sodium pentathol," she explained, proud she was able to remember the whole name. "Where's Cal?"

He shook his head. "Parsons shot him." He looked her up and down. She wanted to close the knife rents in her blouse. He shouldn't see her like this. He looked into her eyes. That big-brother look again. "Can you walk?"

"Uh-huh," she answered, slipping off of the table with his help.  _Maybe not._  She hung onto him, as he moved swiftly into the shadows. There were people everywhere. Some in casual clothes, some in suits. Mulder was wearing jeans, and a t-shirt with a light jacket over it. She wondered if that made the plain clothes men the good guys.  _What a switch for the FBI._

She and Mulder slipped around the outside of the melee, climbing a flight of stairs which led to a catwalk above the baggage offload area. She was about to suggest that he could stop his stranglehold on her wrist, when Parker ducked out of the shadows. With a gun this time. Mulder fired, missed, fired again. Parker grunted slightly, but squeezed off two shots of her own. Both hit Mulder square on. Scully screamed---screamed louder as the force of the impact pushed her and Mulder's body over the railing, heading for the floor below. Her last panicked thought was that the drop must be twenty-five feet.

 

Actually, it was nearer thirty, but five feet, give or take, mattered very little when concrete was the landing surface. Scully contacted first with her face, the left cheekbone cracking slightly. This first impact knocked her blissfully into unconsciousness, sparing her the pain as two vertebrae slammed together. As she lost consciousness, she could hear Mulder's body hit the floor.

* * *

Scully's eyes shot open. It seemed she couldn't just remember parts of it, she had to remember the whole damn thing. In detail. Every time she slept. She wished she could get up and splash some water on her face. Wash the tears away.

Hell, she wished she could get up, period. But that was not to be. At least not for a while. In that fall she had cracked two vertebrae directly below where her neck met her shoulders. Nothing too permanent, but it would still be another few weeks before she could think about the possibility of even moving her toes.

 _Nothing to do but think._  Which was of course, precisely what she didn't want to do. One thing she thought about often, mainly, she mused, to avoid thinking about Mulder, was Cal Depercio. Cal had had a wife, three teenage girls, a young boy, and the cutest mother Scully had ever had the pleasure to meet. That her stupidity was the cause of his death was something she could never forgive.

Skinner would be coming in soon.

The Debriefing.

The one where she told him everything that happened, got dismissed, and hoped that they'd still cover her medical bills. She knew he felt for her. Losing a partner was never easy. She thought he probably even missed Mulder a little himself.

But he had his standing in the Bureau to think of. His job. She could expect  _her_  job to be gone, given the rank stupidity of her actions, but Skinner had to think about how to disassociate himself. Cover his own ass. Cover it, undoubtedly, with her dried carcass.

 

She managed a five hour, morphine-induced sleep before Skinner showed up. She was much the better mentally for having some dreamless rest, but she felt a little sicker. Her head hurt as badly as it had when she'd first woke up, and she had a vicious little rattle in her chest.  _Pneumonia. Has to be._  It was not unexpected. She knew the statistics. Five of every six spinal injury patients had at least one bout of pneumonia in the first two weeks of recovery. She  _never_  got to beat the odds these days.

Skinner took a long time about it, and he brought six of those guys Mulder had dubbed "the Faceless Ones"---Dark suits from who knew where, whose only job seemed to be interrogating FBI agents. Particularly ones who had screwed up as bad as she had.

They asked about her movements during the 24-hour period which comprised "the incident." They asked about how she had got her information about Parsons's whereabouts, discussed how the research about Parsons's incompetence could have been so inaccurate. They asked all kinds of questions about the methods she and Mulder used in profiling a suspect, seeming to neglect the fact that Parsons had been profiled by another group entirely. She and Mulder had only received his name through their contacts.

Along about the time they started pushing her about Mulder's contacts in general, she started to smell a rat. One of Mulder's shadow-type rats, to be precise.

She told them small vague bits, as little as possible, while building up to enough of a coughing fit to get the attendant nurse to usher them all out, saying they could come back later, when "the patient" was feeling better. Actually, now that they were gone, Scully felt quite a bit better.  _Yes, that cough seemed to have calmed down just as they left the room. How strange._

 

Skinner came back on "personal business" later that day. She was feeling pretty miserable by this time, the pneumonia having taken a quick, hard hold on her. She was alert enough, however, to see that someone had been pushing him. Pushing him hard in a direction he absolutely did not want to go.

"Scully," he said, his eyes showing that he knew he had no flair for this, no ability to be caring. "I  _am_  sorry about Mulder." Actually, Scully thought, he wasn't that bad at it. Sincere smile, a mournful voice. Not bad.

"Yes," she agreed quietly, stopping for a moment to cough in a way that made him start toward her. "No, I'm okay," she insisted, her body collapsing back after a moment.  _Just a lung. It'll grow back._  "You're sorry. But... ?"

Skinner's eyes flashed angrily. "Damn it, Scully! They want it! The X-Files! They want all of it."

She could hear the wheeze getting worse. "And?"

"And I don't have it for them." He turned to her, almost pleading.  _He can't be such a coward. He's put his job on the line for the files before. He can't back out now. What the hell have they got on him to make him this afraid?_  She realized she was starting to think like Mulder, but didn't bother to try to explore what that might mean.

"And you want me to give them to you?" She didn't quite understand. "You have the office, the files..."

Skinner shook his head. "Yes, but not the contacts, the knowledge. Not," he said, advancing on the bed slowly, "the things he told you. The information that will never show up in any files."

She covered her initial burst of anger with a well-timed coughing fit which, when it became real, took her a few moments to recover from. "You won't have them." She almost smiled. Her voice now was little more than a whisper, ruined by the hacking coughs. "I'm history anyway.  _He's_  history. Why should the information be any different."

Skinner watched her face for a moment longer, anger growing in his eyes, mingling with the fear already there. She just stared back.  _There is no way his information gets into their hands. I didn't betray him before, and I won't betray him now._

After a few minutes, she began to hack in earnest, her senseless arms and legs twitching as her brain pushed automatic movements through her bruised spinal cord. Skinner started and jumped for the nurse's button.

* * *

The torture and the sodium pentathol had both served to lower her resistance to a dangerous level. She was dying. She knew it, even as they moved her to the swing bed, strapping her into traction while tilting her up to allow her lungs to drain. She knew they wouldn't. She didn't really care.

The increased morphine helped dull the pain, and her mind, but her thoughts still dwelt on Mulder's death. The death she had caused. She wondered vaguely if he and her mother were right about life after death. She almost hoped they were. She could see his face, see him shaking his finger at her as she crossed over, saying "I told you so."

 

At six-thirty a.m., five days after the incident, Dana Scully began to go seriously about the business of dying. She would take all the morphine they would give her now, not caring how dull her thought processes were.

She hoped they were dull enough when a young man came in. Dark suit, dark eyes. FBI, CIA, DoD---someone. He started asking her questions---questions she knew she should not answer. She didn't. She felt it all falling away, and began her dying, secure in the knowledge that they got nothing from her.

 

At seven thirty-eight, a.m., Scully heard someone calling her. Someone whose voice was filled with anger, fear, longing. Someone.

"Scully!" It was Mulder.  _He's mad at me._ He's mad. he left me alone, deserted his own partner. He died first, and he's _mad._  She would have smiled, wished she had it in her to laugh. "Scully! Scully, hold on!"

 _Why would I want to do that?_  she thought, trying to open her eyes so she could see him there, in his righteous, after-life glow. He kept calling to her. Hold on. don't go. He kept calling her name.  
It was starting to give her a headache.

She took one deep breath, and he finally shut up.

* * *

Karen Dalton clocked in, beginning another of those twelve on-twelve off days that are standard fare for an ICU nurse. She looked at the monitors briefly, her gaze resting on one in particular. "Jesus, is he still here?"

Diana Feyton yawned and stood up, preparing to clock off. "Yeah. Hasn't moved but once, and that was just to get some coffee so he wouldn't fall asleep."

"Man," said Karen, dropping into the newly-vacated seat. "I'm surprised Phelan hasn't kicked him out. He's been there for two straight days."

"He tried."

Karen sat up. "Seriously? Man, what happened?"

Diana shrugged, too nonchalantly. "The fed pulled rank." She couldn't hold it anymore, burst out laughing. "You should have seen it, it was brilliant. Phelan goes in there, Mister Administrator, and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, visiting hours are over, you'll have to leave.' This guy just pulls out his badge, stares at him and says, 'go away.' I've never seen Phelan so scared!"

Karen laughed as well, then stared back at the monitor. "You remember that girl... Sandra, or---no, Cassandra Wilkes? Raped and beaten. Lay there in a coma for a week?" She gestured to the screen. "Her brother..."

"Brian," Diana supplied, nodding.

"Right, Brian. He used to do that. Just sit there and look at her for hours on end." She turned away from the monitor. "Jesus, I'd wake up just tell him to stop staring at me."

Diana pulled on her coat, slipping around in front of the nurse's station. "Do you remember what Brian Wilkes did to the guy?"

Karen nodded. Damage like that you never forgot.

"Well, this guy's a government agent. I'd hate to see the guys who did this when he gets done with them."

 

Mulder was already "done with them." At least those he could get to. The Shadows had faded into the woodwork, as usual.

Skinner had been livid when told that one of their own had been a party to the theft, and quietly chose not to delve into the manner or violence of her death.

Mulder wouldn't say for sure whether it  _was_  a theft. Too many years fighting too many shadows had made him aware that coincidences were rarely coincidences in his line of work.

The "terrorists" had tried to interrogate her using pain, and probably had not got very far in extracting information. She was a lot tougher than most people in the bureau, or anywhere else, would credit her with being. The cuts were not so deep that she would have too many scars, but they were serious enough, and the bullet in her shoulder would still have to be removed when she was stronger.

After that lack of success, they had turned to other means of "information extraction." Coincidentally, one of the chemical compounds they had stolen was not a weapon at all, but a top secret interrogation experiment that had proven to be too deadly for the government to sanction---even under extreme conditions.

Coincidence was a word.  _Convenient,_  another, and definitely the one he would use.

 

Whatever information they had gotten from her, it was not likely to do them much good now. After finding her gun in a luggage bin below the airport, the trail had run dry. Three days had passed before Cal had received a call from a friend in Washington. He must have had some better friends than Mulder, he had bragged, because  _his_  friend was able to tell them of a probable hiding place for the weapons, and their thieves: An old military bunker, fifteen miles east of Stapleton, decommissioned and buried---physically and historically---by the DoD.  _That word convenient keeps popping up, doesn't it, Mulder?_  he thought.

Of course, it was Mulder's contacts who had told him about the interrogation procedure.

It consisted of a collection of psychotropic drugs which, in combination with even rudimentary hypnosis, could create a completely believable scenario in the subject's mind. Set the subject's mind running, placing a few helpful suggestions along the way, and follow it, letting them make the rules. When the time was right, you could ask them almost whatever you wanted, and they would usually arrange their scenarios to furnish the answers. Sometimes, their personality would preclude any answers---loyalty, fidelity, and honesty getting in the way---but that was a rare case.

It was no more effective than sodium pentathol, no less time consuming than torture. It was simply different. And new. And these traitors had used Scully as a test subject.

Cal was fond of Scully, and by the time Mulder had explained the process to him, it wasn't too surprising that there had been 100% opponent casualties. Looking back, Mulder could see that he might have handled it better and gotten some important information.  _But it sure felt good._

* * *

By the time they had reached the bunker, Scully was in the last phase of the treatment. Mulder's contacts had told him that only four government subjects had survived to this last round of drugs. Of them, three had died. He had grabbed her, tried to keep her at least semiconscious as Cal's medical team got to them. He had told her to hold on, angry, almost begging. She'd smiled briefly. Then, she had died. Flatlined. For two minutes.

When they got her back, Mulder had slumped over, hard. He'd been holding his breath, waiting for her, willing her not to go. When they lost her again on the emergency room table, he had simply stared through the door's window, dumbfounded. She was going to leave him. She was going to leave just like Samantha had. Except that Samantha was still out there somewhere, and Scully was... He resumed breathing when he heard the monitor beep erratically, then hold a steady, slow rhythm.

* * *

She had been unconscious for seven days, drugged for most of it. He had been awake for seven days, looking for her, waiting for her. It was probably not surprising, then, that just as she awoke, he began to doze. He was shocked awake again by her cry. "Mulder!"

He looked up at her, then sat up straight in his chair, positioned to the right of her bed. She just stared at him. It was eerie. It was terrifying. "Scully? It's okay." She still stared. He called louder, "Scully?"

She just looked at him, stared at him so hard his skin hurt. He saw the nurse appear at the door, held her off with a hand. "Scully? Can you hear me?"

"Mulder?" she fell back, still looking at him with such disbelief that he began to wonder if the doctor's had been wrong, if the drugs and the anoxia really had caused some brain damage.

"Yes, Scully, it's me. I'm here." He moved closer to the bed, a tentative hand on her arm.

She tilted her head, trying to puzzle it out. "But you shouldn't be. Two bullets... the fall..." she petered out, staring down at herself, realizing, now, that she could move. She raised a hand, curling it into a fist just to be sure. When it obeyed her, she fell back, amazed, and a look came over her face, so confused, so totally lost, that Mulder's fists curled angrily in response.

The hypnosis. The interrogation. They must have suggested that he was dead, probably assuming that that would be sufficient for her to give up information on his work, his contacts. He willed himself to calm down, and with a look, forced Karen Dalton out of the room. Scully needed  _him_  before she needed medical help.

"Scully, I'm here. It's okay." He stroked her hair, soft and clean. They had washed it everyday, explaining that people were often confused enough after prolonged unconsciousness, and making sure they woke up clean seemed to make them more comfortable. He slid his hands calmingly through it. Comforting a child. "Scully?"

She finally looked at him, really seeing him for the first time. He was relieved to see that old look of wary, but cogent, disbelief creep back into her eyes. That look of abject fear had scared him, had made him think she might be lost. "What happened? The airport. Parker. And then...?"

He told her everything, still running his hand through her hair. As her mind cleared more, she noticed it, and didn't stop him. The hypnosis had created an illusion so real that she still could only stare at him, listening only dimly to what he said. He was alive, and she was alive, and all the bad guys were dead, and that thought amused her.

But a sudden image came into her head. Parker leaning over her.  _What happened when you disappeared?_  She tensed.

Mulder immediately withdrew his hand from her hair, stepped back, but she shook her head. It wasn't that.

"They asked me about when I disappeared."

He leaned back over her. "What did you say?"

Scully shook her head, held still a moment, then shook it again. "I don't know. I screamed. I don't think I told them anything." She stared up at him, scared. "Mulder, I should have been able to tell them, right? I should have  _had_  to."

He watched her carefully, said gently, "But  _they_  might not have asked you."

"What do you mean?"

"You created this scenario in your head. They only suggested some of the situations, some of the questions you might get asked." He straightened up. "Maybe you were just trying to remember, using the drugs as a stepping stone."

She turned her head to one side, suddenly exhausted again. "So why  _can't_  I?"

* * *  
The End

 


End file.
